Welcome to the League of Legends Patch Preview. I’m Phreak and I’m here with Morello, Lead Champion Designer.
Together we’ll be discussing some of the gameplay changes coming into the next update for League of Legends.
While this video does not cover every single change, it will explain the thought process behind some of our decisions.
Our more support-oriented tanks tend to get blown up in team fights without a lot of focus from the enemy team.
In this update, we’re giving magic resist per level to Alistar, Amumu, Leona, Nunu, and Taric. Why these champions and why this buff?
Magic resist per level is there to help champions who are in the front lines survive area of effect damage.
The champions we selected here are in the support-tank role.
This means they’re not getting as much gold as a solo lane, but still need survivability to fulfill their duties.
This is a pretty simple change that should help support tanks feel more like real tanks at later stages in the game.
Master Yi has some pretty big problems with consistency, and it makes him either dominate a game or completely fall flat.
Next update, Highlander’s duration is going up at lower ranks. What do we expect to happen after these buffs?
Highlander is really the thing that lets Master Yi be Master Yi, and an increased duration on this means he’s going to be Master Yi more often.
The duration increase on Highlander is really there to give Yi mid game team fight presence and better ganking power.
This is important for Yi as he’s a champion who needs a ton of gold and he needs a decent early game to be effective later.
Ryze has a few major issues: First, he’s overpowered in high-level play as he deals way too much damage for how tanky he gets.
Second, he has only one real item build without any room for variety.
In the Varus update, Ryze is undergoing a whole suite of changes:
The mana ratios on Overload and Rune Prison are getting nerfed, but Spell Flux is gaining one.
Overload’s base damage and ability power ratio are going up and Spell Flux is going to prioritize bounces to enemy champions.
We’re tweaking some of his base stats, mana costs, and spell ranges to make him more consistent with other mages.
Finally, his ultimate is losing its passive mana and gaining an additional active effect, granting bonus movement speed.
What do we expect to see out of these changes to Ryze?
By lowering the mana-to-damage ratios on his abilities and removing the passive mana from his ultimate, the tanky build is just going to deal less damage.
With him getting improved AP ratios and Spell Flux hitting champions more often, buying AP should be a much more attractive option if you want to deal lots of damage.
For example, instead of buying a Banshee’s Veil, you could opt for more damage in a Rod of Ages or you could upgrade your Tear of the Goddess into an Archangel’s Staff and actually get legitimate damage returns on it.
The addition of movement speed to the ultimate gives Ryze more gameplay options.
Since you can now choose to build Ryze in the traditional tanky manner or a little bit more of a glass cannon, this movement speed lets the glass cannon skirt at the edges of a fight and choose good opportunities to attack.
Itemization for our ability power-oriented champions has grown pretty stale, so we’re amping up a number of our ability power items.
Deathfire Grasp is losing its mana regeneration and gaining more ability power.
Morello’s Evil Tome is replacing its Blasting Wand with Kage’s Lucky Pick.
Additionally, it’s gaining an active effect that reduces the incoming healing on an enemy champion for a few seconds.
Finally, the total cost for Will of the Ancients is going up. What do we hope to see out of all these changes?
Increasing the ability power on Deathfire Grasp makes it that all-in AP item it’s supposed to be.
Manaless champions can now look at Deathfire Grasp as a viable option since they’re not wasting gold on mana regeneration.
Since Morello’s Evil Tome now builds out of Kage’s Lucky Pick and contains stats that support should find attractive, this is going to be an interesting item for support players.
The new “Grievous Wounds” active allows casters and supports to be able to deal with healing and sustain without having to choose Ignite.
Item-based counters are a good way for a team to look at the enemy team and go, “Wow, we really need to deal with this right now.”
For all the Dr. Mundo and Swain players out there, this item does require an investment, and you’re not totally screwed.
We think it’s going to be fine, but as always we will keep an eye on this type of thing.
Since Will of the Ancients was too cost-efficient for the stats you were getting, we wanted to raise the cost as opposed to reduce the power.
You still get the cool item; you just have to pay what the item is worth now.
The reason we touched all these items in the first place was to increase caster item diversity.
Most games you just saw a Deathcap or Will of the Ancients on almost every AP caster.
This should open up a lot more options for how you want to customize your AP mage play.
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